


Nine Lives

by DefinitelyNotStraight



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Angella Lives (She-Ra), Angella is Rescued (She-Ra), Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Catra (She-Ra) Needs a Hug, Catra (She-Ra) Redemption, Catra Has Issues (She-Ra), Elemental Magic, F/F, Glimmer Needs a Hug (She-Ra), Good Parent Angella (She-Ra), Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Self-Sacrifice, Therapy Cat Melog (She-Ra)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-13 16:48:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29654319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DefinitelyNotStraight/pseuds/DefinitelyNotStraight
Summary: Catra wants to save Angella, to fix what she has done. The war is over, and she never wants to see Glimmer cry again.So she finds a way.
Relationships: Adora/Catra (She-Ra), Angella & Catra (She-Ra), Catra & Glimmer (She-Ra), Catra & Melog (She-Ra)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 86





	Nine Lives

**Author's Note:**

> I had an idea. Will probably become a longer fic.
> 
> Enjoy my shittily written angst.

Catra likes being high up.   
Maybe it's a cat thing, maybe it's something left over from how safe the ceiling vents in the horde were from Shadow Weaver's wrath. Maybe it's a little of both.  
So how she is free, and Prime has fucked off, she spends most of her time off the ground. Bow believes it's a resurgence of the cat instincts that Shadow Weaver had forced her to ignore and move on from much too early as a child.  
Either way, she likes it, curled up in the rafters of the castles thousands of rooms with Melog. She naps up there, with her Krytiscat all blue and mellow and purring against her, and she catches up on all the sleep she missed from the insane training regime the Horde gave them.   
Other times, she just thinks, swinging her legs in the air and watches Frosta and Scorpia play hide and seek or tag through the castle, sometimes accompanied by Glimmer and Bow.   
Catra learns alot from her seat in the ceiling beams. She learns about the gossip of the castle (apparently Chef Yarrow is sleeping with one of the royal guards), she learns about Brightmoon customs and rules that was never taught. She even learns about her friends, on the days she has the energy to stalk across the ceilings to keep an eye on them, to make sure they're safe.  
It's through this that she learns that Frosta came to the throne at eight years old, after an illness took King Julian and King Reynard too early.  
She learns that Perfuma loves caramel tarts, and that she often sneaks out of the palace to play with the village children and teach them about the flowers that her magic nurtures.   
Apparently Netossa and Spinnerella have been dating since they were sixteen years old, and are thinking about adopting some of the orphans who lost their parents in the war, along with acting as Parent-Regents for Frosta.   
They all seemed to forget sometimes that the ice princess wasn't even thirteen yet, but not Spinny and Netossa. They see the girl who imprinted on them and Queen Glimmer like a baby duckling and immediately decided that the child needed some mothers.   
Bow can play the piano, she learns, and she feels sick to her stomach when she learns that Queen Angella taught it to him and Glimmer.  
Guilt bubbles up inside her when she thinks on the late Queen, the woman who stayed behind to fix the mess that Catra caused because she was so blinded by her own agony and thirst for blood. 

Its while up in the rafters that she has an idea.  
She's napping, and slowly wakes up to a soft rumble from Melog.   
She looks below her, and her ears flatten against her head when she hears very familiar sobs.   
She would know the sound of Glimmer crying anywhere. All those nights on the Prime ship, outside the green force field, listening to Glimmer sob in her sleep. Begging for her mom, for Adora and Bow, for Catra herself to save her.   
It was a sweet kind of torture that Catra indulged in at her lowest points on that ship.  
She was about to go and soothe the pink haired queen, before she hears Adora enter and beat her to it.  
"I want my mom! I'd do anything to see her again." Glimmer sobs into the blondes chest, and something sparks in Catra.  
She looks at her magical Krytiscat and hums, an idea forming.  
◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇  
Catra is in the library where Bow grew up. Lance let her in, stating that any friend of Bow's is a friend of theirs. He gets her tea, one without milk because she is lactose intolerant like most cats are, and he leaves her to it.  
She dives into piles of scrolls, researching her species with an interest that she never had before, with Melog asleep in his large form at her feet.  
Her research about the Magicat species takes a long time, and her tea is long cold, but finally she had enough of a clue to think that maybe her plan was plausible.  
Magicats, as the name suggested, were human/cat hybrids that had magic, but the magic had diminished over time through various climate factors and nomadic tendencies, plus breeding with more human-like species.   
But the one thing they had maintained, was their lives.   
The myth that cats had nine lives was a truth for Magicats, and Catra has six of hers left after the portal and Shadow Weaver.   
She looks to Melog, who was regarding her carefully, and she grins.  
"How powerful are you, Melog?" She asks, and the cat blinks intelligent mellow-blue eyes at her. 

-tell me what your idea is- he asks, and she nods.  
And then her plan begins.  
◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇  
She tells Adora that she is going camping with Melog, to bond more with her familiar, and her girlfriend mistakes the wild excitement in her eyes for being stir crazy, and packs her some food and waves her off.   
She settles on Melog, and she nods to the cat, and he darts off through the trees to the Fright Zone, to the abandoned compound where Catra had opened the portal.  
It's alot less dark and gloomy than she remembers, the magic that She-Ra had unleashed covered all the sites that hummed with dark magic in her own light stuff, covering it in flowers and other nature. Still, no one could face going near it, and even Scorpia had adjusted the borders to her kingdom so she wouldn't have to go near it again.  
So it belonged to nature, and as they approached, Catra could see rabbits and little fawns playing in the tall grass, looking content in the sun.  
They were unbothered here, so they did not fear when Catra and Melog entered, just watched cautiously as they passed, before going back to their game.   
The Krytiscat and the Magicat slip deeper into the wilderness, into broken structures and collapsed beams, and Catra winced as they approach the vaguely humming remains of the portal that she tried to use to end the world.  
She had been so stupid, and she let's a tear slip when she thinks of Queen Angella. The queen who was just, and kind, and motherly. Her friends had told her about the woman, about how she had helped Adora come to terms with food and flavours that had overwhelmed her, how she had taught Bow piano because he didn't want his only skill to be something that was offensive.   
How she had held Princess Spinnerella tight when she had been seperated from her people, and had kept her safe and sound with Netossa when the news arrived that the Gailmoon kingdom had been decimated by the Horde.   
Glimmer had told her once that her mother had wanted to save the Horde cadets. That she was working on a way to keep them safe after the war, to integrate them with society and undo all the damage that Shadow Weaver had done to them. The pink princess had told Catra from her cell about how her mother made Adora tell her about all the Horde cadets, all the things they can't eat, the things that may give them trauma and therefore would need a therapist. How she had asked after Catra herself, even when the teenage Magicat was slaughtering her people in hope of getting an ounce of praise from Shadow Weaver.  
"I need to get her back, Melog." She sobbed into the orange tinted fur of the cat that was reacting to her emotions, and he rumbled softly.  
-Are you sure? This could kill you.- He frets, and Catra gives a soft, bitter laugh.  
"It should have been me who died anyway. And I'll do it, if it means Glimmer gets her mom back and Micah gets to see his wife again." She says, and her Krytiscat sees that she's sure.   
He doesn't like it, but he also knows that Catra would try this without his magic if he refused, so he curls up on her lap, laps at her palm, and closes his eyes. 

And it begins.  
◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇  
It could have been hours, or weeks, or days. She thinks hours though, but Catra's sense of time escaped her with the sheer agony that tore through her from the inside out.  
It was like being electrocuted and boiled in the acid of Prime's pool once again. But for longer, and with more clarity, and without the hope of an end. It was like she was caught on fire, like the receiving end of She-Ra's blade, Glimmer's magic bursts and Scorpia's shocks all at once. Like her nerves were being flayed one by one.  
One after the other, her lives slip from her grasp, melt into the swirling multicolored magic of Melog and the portal.   
Tears stream down her cheeks, or is it blood? She can't tell, she can't see beyond the burning colours that spark behind her eyelids, and even the pressure of her cat in her lap is no longer as comforting as she remembers.   
Eventually, she breaks, and she sobs and begs for it to stop. She says she is sorry over and over, she begs and screams for Adora, for Glimmer, for Scorpia and Entrapta to come and just make it stop.  
In her most delirious states, she begs for Shadow Weaver, for the woman who hated her but had died to keep her safe in the end. Even if it was just for Adora.   
How many lives has she lost now? And she still can't see nor hear Angella.  
She can't take this. 

Yes she can, she remembers. She deserves this pain, she needs to give Glimmer her mom back, give Brightmoon its queen back. She needs to make sure that Glimmer never cries out for her mother again, and realise that her mother will never come back.  
So Catra grits her teeth, bites her tongue until blood runs down her chin and throat, until it drips and tangles in Melog's fur.  
She screams, and she cries, but she no longer begs, nor mourns when she feels her chest become heavier with each life she loses. 

◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇◇ 

"Catra!" A voice is calling her name, and the darkness that envelops Catra lifts. She opens her eyes, her gaze fuzzy, and the taste of her own rancid blood fills her senses. She vomits to the side immediately, almost entirely her own blood from what she swallowed.  
Her gaze clears as Melog whispers and curls around her in his largest size, trying to comfort her, to ease the pain she demanded that he gave her.  
Then clarity hits Catra like a train, and she looks up.   
The face looming over her is dirty, covered in tears and dried blood. The hair is pale pink and tangled like a bird's nest, and the huge white wings the figure has are ruffled and need preening desperately. The white feathers are ragged and grey with soot, and the pale face of the woman is concerned, bags under her eyes.  
She looks exhausted, and definitely the least regal she has ever been, but it is definitely Queen Angella.  
"Your majesty." Catra coughs, expelling a little more blood, and the Queen swoops in to pat the Magicat's back and tilt her head so she doesn't choke.  
"You ridiculous, self-sacrificing girl." The woman scolds, but its wobbly and it's clear that the woman is crying.  
"Glimmer needs her mother, and you deserve to live. I'm so sorry, Queen Angella!" Catra suddenly wails with her already hoarse throat, and the Queen holds the young woman close.   
"You were brainwashed and betrayed. You did not know what you were doing. I forgive you, little cat. I've been watching you, I think. The memories are hazy, but I was so proud of you." Angella whispers into a soft-furred ear, and the emotions that slam into the younger woman are too much, and she promptly faints.   
Queen Angella smiles down at the girl, covered in blood and slashes from where she had allowed magic to hack her apart over she over again to save a woman she had never met. A woman she was raised to hate.   
"I am so proud of you, Catra. But you will be explaining to my daughter and her friends exactly what you did to save me." She scolds the slumbering girl softly, lifting her into her arms and looking to the mellow blue cat by their side.  
"Can you take us home?" She asks it, and it tilts a head to her, before it makes a leaning sound that the Queen thinks is an affirmation.   
She takes a handful of its mane, and it gives a meowing rumble of a purr, before it bolts, and Angella flies after it, lead gently by her hand in blue magic fur.  
She was going home, and tears of joy stream down her cheeks.


End file.
